A program of duos for violin and pianoMozart: Sonata in F Major K. 377

The three Sonatas, K. 376, 377 and 380, are the product of his first weeks
and months of freedom from Salzburg serfdom. Scholarship is nowadays rightly
wary of extrapolating biographical stuff from pieces of music, but these
three capture the essence of Mozart at that moment of change.BEETHOVEN:
Sonata for Violin and Piano in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2
Beethoven composed the Sonata for Violin and Piano in C minor, Op. 30,
No. 2 in 1801-02.

Beethoven: Sonata Number Seven in C
Minor
The character of the sonata comes as something of a surprise: it doesn’t
quite display the heart on sleeve passion that we associate with Beethoven
in C minor. Like the “Tempest” Sonata, it is a knotty work,
hinting at intense but repressed emotions. Each movement opens softly,
with the piano alone (a holdover, perhaps, from the days when all such
duo sonatas were billed as “for piano with violin accompaniment"),
and for most of the way our stereotypical Beethoven the thunderer yields
to Beethoven the rumbler.

Brahms: Sonata Number One in G Major
Much to his credit, Brahms, though a formidable pianist (and you know
how “front and center” pianists like to be) reined in the
piano so that his approach to the violin sonata was not unlike that of
vocal music. The piano provides an accompaniment to the violin, which
like a vocalist, gets to sing the melodies. As a matter of fact the third
movement of this sonata is based on two songs from Brahms Op.59, Regenlied
(Rain Song) and Nachklang (Memories) whose lyrics evoke rain.